My creative space

This week i've been making capes for some special boys.
I bought some magnetic clasps to use as the fasteners but they ended up being so strong i couldn't pry them apart. SO i had a change in tactic and put a piece of elastic at the front.
It was hard trying to get a pic of the cape in action... dman was running so fast so his cape would fly and looking backwards so he could watch it! A disaster waiting to happen, but so much fun :)

Living GF

I'm sure iv'e mentioned it before but incase you didn't know I have coeliacs and can not eat gluten at all. I just found out last year and was very unwell with a few hospital stays and many many tests until finally the penny dropped and a diagnosis was reached. Since excluding gluten from my diet my whole life has changed. No more pain, reflux, tiredness etc.

Lucky for me it's not as hard to go gluten free as it was a few years ago. There are many yummy gluten free products and really i don't feel like i go without at all. I know how bad those krispy kreme donuts make me feel up to a week after consuming them and so I don't crave these foods at all.

The hardest part of having coeliacs is trying to get a good gluten free meal while out and about.
Have you noticed that all GF food in cafes and coffee shops is nothing but friands and orange/almond cake? Not so good when you're trting to go low GI and lose weight on this seemingly high GI diet and all you want is a good salad with protien or some vegie risotto. Iv'e also found that a lot of places will just tell you the food is gluten free but really they have no clue that the salad dressing has a wheat product in it or they simply don't care and will tell you what you want to hear.

But it's not all bad really, you just need to be super organised with meal planning and make sure you have snacks on hand to tie you over if you happen to be out when the hunger strikes.

Being new at this game Iv'e had to educate myself in how to produce good healthy GF foods. Joining the coealiacs society has been helpful too.

The 4 Ingredients gluten free cook book has been pretty good. I thought it would be a little dodgy but suprisingly my very fussy 3 year old has enjoyed everything from that book.

Another great book is Low GI gluten-free living . This is the book I prefer to eat from as it has balanced low GI foods as the title suggests. However, the littlest one is not so keen.

I don't cook 2 meals for dinner, we all eat GF . Brekky & lunch is whatever the family wants so they still get to eat their sandwiches and weetbix if they like.

Anyway, I thought i'd show you some pictures...



THIS salad is delicious! I had to try as soon as I found it, it has sardines & pear, a strange combo but delish. I used baby cos instead of spinach. It's an awesomly filling lunch.



Baked Ricotta & Thyme Pie from 4 Ing - yum



Nachos 4 Ing style. not my favourite only because i'm not a cheddar fan, but the kids requested it and of course they loved it.



Sweet potato & fetta frittata again from 4 Ing. and with that yummy salad.

two is definately better than one

Feeling guilty about my pathetic dishcloth create a long attempt and only producing 1 when others have created many I decided to make another, but a more simple style this time. I managed to crank the second one out in about an hour, whereas the first took me a few days...

I used patterns from 'the big book of Dishcloths'. If you have this book I used #96 & #16.

The yarn used was Lion Cotton - colour 146 fuchsia

So now I have a lovely pair of cloths in my gift stash. The yarn I used was really easy to crochet so I will have to get some more from the lovely Gabrielle at American Yarns.

wash cloth create-a-long

Earlier this week I joined in on One Crafty Mumma's create-a-long.

The idea was to knit or crochet as many cloths as you like and seeing as my crochet skills are a trillion times better than my knitting skills I decided to crochet some cloths.

It's a good thing that I picked up a dishcloth pattern book before I left Brissy. I know there's hundreds of free patterns on line, but i really prefer hard copies. Anyways, I managed to make a whole 1 dishcloth. Thought i'd try something fancy... still undecided as to wether I should put a pretty boarder on it on leave it as is.

I plan to make a stash of these to give as gifts, so it may be the first of many.

weekend trip away

Last weekend we made a snap desicion to go down to Mackay to meet up with my lovely cousins from Canberra. We drove down on saturday & back on sunday.

On the way down we stopped off in Ayr to do some geocaching. It's so lovely and green in this part of Queensland due to all the recent rain and so of course the mosquitos were out in full force and had a feast. Dman & I raced back to the car covered in mozzies while con, meeks & fox weren't far behind. It didn't stop them, they applied reppelant and went back to it and came up with the goods. This cache is a film canister that has a film type log. The kids thought it was cool.


AYR

After our quick stop we were back on the road towards Bowen (famous for their mangos & the movie 'Australia') where we stopped for lunch. Then on to Mackay. Where we caught up with our lovelies, ate, drank & were merry.


BOWEN

We headed back home early sunday morning with our sights set on Airlie Beach for lunch. word of warning just incase you go there... lunch doesn't start til noon at most places but thankfully we found a sweet spot which overlooked the cafe strip called 'shipwrecked', the food there was fab.
Words can not explain how special this place is and not even the pictures do it justice.
The only bad part was that it is stinger season so there was no getting in the water, but look out Airlie Beach, we'll be back and you'll get to see us in all our bathing glory. yeah, i think that's a threat...lol

As we left it started to rain., then we had another quick stop in Bowen again before heading for home.